Help your Community Prosper: Enhance Your Heritage
Look toward a brilliant future.
Think for a moment about your community: its people, their relationships, the businesses, streetscapes, buildings, organizations, churches, open space, traditions, and more.
You want your community to thrive.
How the Past can create a brilliant Future
Consider this strategy: Honor and develop your community’s heritage.
Throughout the world, communities have invigorated their economies and become better places by preserving and developing their heritage assets.
Read why heritage makes a difference. See a site map for this toolkit.
Make the most of heritage: Four Keys *
Preserving a building, producing a walking tour, developing a historic site…these are all great actions.
But longterm, sustainable success requires the magic of an overall vision, community involvement, partnerships, planning, and tools.
Explore these four keys to success:
Key 1: Assess.
Evaluate your community’s assets and its needs.
Key 2: Organize and Plan.
Form and formalize partnerships. Create a vision and plan.
Key 3: Prepare and Protect.
Educate stakeholders and visitors. Put tools in place to preserve heritage assets.
Key 4: Market.
Make sure businesses, visitors, future residents, and possible investors know about your community and have the information they need.
Links and resources
*In order to keep things clear, we have based these Keys on the Four Steps developed by the National Trust for Historic Preservation. Get much more help and read more about these Keys on the Trust's excellent Cultural Heritage Tourism website.